The Pascal Mystery
“The Christian who is happy enough to enter, with his whole mind and heart, into the know ledge and the love of the Paschal Mystery, has reached the very center of the supernatural life.” — Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, vol. VII.
Centrality of the Paschal Mystery
What is this term “Paschal Mystery?” It refers to the redemption wrought by our Lord Jesus Christ, both in its dolorous and its triumphant aspects. “By dying he [Jesus Christ] destroyed our death, and by rising again he restored us to life” (Preface of Easter).
The Paschal Mystery is at the very center of our Faith; it gives us hope of eternal life; and it forms a pattern for our spiritual lives. “For we are buried togeth er with [Christ] by baptism into death: that, as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
A term poorly understood
Sadly, the liturgical “reformers” of the twentieth century hijacked the term “Paschal Mystery,” itself quite ancient and orthodox, and assigned it new meaning. Indeed, this term has been used as a Trojan horse for ushering into the Church a false spirituality and a gravely inaccurate concept of the Redemption.
In this new spirituality, the triumph of our Lord comes to supplant the dolors of his passion, not only for Christ person ally, who has already entered into his glory, but even for us here on earth, so that the joyous elements of the spiritual life must always prevail over the sorrowful; accordingly, the Church militant on earth has become an “Easter people” and the crucifix has been replaced, in many instances, with the so-called “resurrexifix” or image of our Lord triumphant.
The danger of this new spiritual ity is that, as an “Easter people,” we forget the grim reality that we are strangers and pilgrims in this world (1 Peter 2:11), where our tears are our bread day and night (Ps. 41:4), unhappy until we be delivered from the body of this death (Rom. 7:24). We forget that, while our Lord has entered already into his glory, we ourselves still have to strive law fully (2 Tim. 2:5), finish our own combat (2 Tim. 4:7) and be made conformable to our Christ’s death (Phil. 3:10). In other words, we forget the difference between the here and the hereafter.
The Two Times
“There are two times,” writes St. Augustine: “one which is now, and is spent in the temptations and tribulations of this life; the other which shall be then, and shall be spent in eternal security and joy. In figure of these, we celebrate two periods: the time before Easter, and the time after Easter. That which is before Easter signifies the sorrow of this present life; that which is after Easter, the blessedness of our future state” (Ennarrations: Ps. 148).
The joy of paschaltide can never fully express the reality it signifies, nor indeed can it free us from the uncertainty of our present condition, in which we are never sure of our perseverance. That is why the penitential seasons of the Church are some how more natural to us, more suited to our present condition. In these latter, we experience a real sorrow; in those, a figura tive joy, foretaste of what is not yet, but is to come. Meanwhile, we console ourselves with the thought that the true paschaltide is one that we shall celebrate for all eternity, where there will be no mourning, or crying, or sorrow anymore, for God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes (Apoc. 21:4).
Centrality of the Cross
Pope Pius XII forwarned us of these dangers when he wrote, “[I]t is perfectly clear how much modern writers are wanting in the genuine and true liturgic al spirit who, deceived by the illusion of a higher mysticism… say that the glorified Christ, who
liveth and reigneth forever and sitteth at the right hand of the Father, has been overshadowed and in His place has been sub stituted that Christ who lived on earth…[But] since His bitter sufferings constitute the principal mystery of our redemption, it is only fitting that the Catholic faith should give it the greatest prominence. This mystery is the very center of divine worship, since the Mass represents and renews it every day and since all the sacraments are most closely united with the cross” (Pius XII, Encyclical Mediator Dei, 162-164 [emphasis added]).
There is a reason why the sufferings, and not the joys, of Christ constitute the principal mystery of our Redemption. It is that our Lord merited our salvation by his sufferings and death; he did not merit by his Resurrection. Since the Redemption was essentially an act of atonement—atonement that requires compensation, or “buying back” at a price—the merits of our Lord’s sufferings are essential to the work of the Redemption in a way that the Resurrection is not, since they alone are the price of our salvation, by which we are redeemed (or bought back) from the servitude of sin. For, “you were not redeemed with corruptible things, as gold or silver...but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled”
(1 Peter 1:18-19). Christ’s death on the cross was his formal act of oblation, by which he offered himself as a victim in satisfaction for our sins. His dying words, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” were like the words of the consecration of the Mass, effecting what they signify, the voluntary sacrifice of his life: for, by a free act of the will he breathed forth his last. “No man taketh [my life] away from me: but I lay it down of myself” (Jn. 10:18). The Resurrection is the response of the Father, showing that he is pleased and accepts the victim that has been offered. It is a reward given to the Son for laying down His life; it is furthermore a pledge of our own future resurrection. And in the present time it signifies our spiritual resurrection from the death of sin, effected by the grace that Christ merited for us on the cross. The resurrection of Christ is thus a beautiful, integral part of the Paschal Mystery; but the sufferings of Christ are what constitute the “principal mystery of our redemption,” and must therefore be given the “greatest prominence” in our spiritual life and in the liturgical life of the Church.
by Father William MacGillivray